Ah, and there we have it: another chapter in the discussion between open and closed when it comes to application stores. A phishing application, masquerading as a banking application from First Tech Credit Union, made its way onto the Android Market. It was removed quickly, but the damage is done.

Then I'd suggest that you were perhaps running the wrong virus scanner previously.

Honest question: is there any current Windows AV software that ISN'T a cure worse than the disease?

I used to be a big AVG fan (and reseller), but they've been going steadily downhill - I finally uninstalled it from my laptop after the 300th or 400th time I had to kill avgsrx.exe because it was randomly jumping to 95% CPU utilization (not to mention the "link scanner" stupidity in recent versions). Avast has a decent reputation, but I couldn't stand its interface - looks like something designed to be a prop in one of the CSI shows (and I nearly jumped out my seat the first time I heard the "Virus definitions updated" audio file, thanks to having headphones on at the time).

I tried Microsoft Security Essentials on a few computers, but after a few weeks it started exhibiting the same behaviours as AVG (excessive, unexplained CPU utilization). And I'm not even going to start on Norton and McAfee (only 6891 characters left, after all).

Also, virus scanners aren't self replicating, so a most they're trojens rather than viruses.

From my personal experience Microsoft One Care is pretty decent in terms of user experience, I'm not so sure about how good it is though as an AV. It let one trojan slip and I had to lose one day to clean my box. I'm giving it another chance though, because I really like the OS integration.

AVG is pretty ok, but again, it let another trojan slip and I had to reinstall the OS.

Avast as you said has a dreadful interface.

I really don't get it ... why can't the AV people use the standard OS widgets? Do people really think that if an AV looks fancier it works better?